Advertisment

Wipro to partner UK’s Friends Provident

author-image
CIOL Bureau
Updated On
New Update

BANGALORE: Wipro Ltd., India's third-largest software exporter, said on

Wednesday that British life insurer Friends Provident Plc has chosen it as a

software development partner.

Advertisment

Wipro Technologies, Wipro's infotech services arm, said in a statement it

will offer software services, maintenance and system integration to Friends

Provident through a software center set up in India for the firm. Wipro will

also work at the life insurer's sites abroad but the majority of work will be

done through the Indian center, a company official told Reuters.

Friends Provident, a 170-year-old company, is among UK's largest listed life

insurance group by market value. On Wednesday afternoon, Wipro's stock was up

0.90 per cent at Rs 1,364.0 while Bombay's main index was down 0.56 per cent.

Wipro and other leading firms are trying to improve profit margins amidst a

slowdown in software orders by boosting the share of work done in India for

overseas clients rather than at customer sites abroad. Doing so enables Indian

companies to perform the work more cheaply, thus potentially attracting more

business.

Wipro's software revenues are equally split between offshore and onsite work

but about 80 per cent of its 10,000 strong staff are based in India.

(C) Reuters Limited 2001.

tech-news